E-Government Comparison between the UAE, the UK, and the USA

Modern world fully depends on new technologies and innovations that appear in average every 5-6 years. Mankind strives to overcome the bureaucratic system and there are a lot of ways for achieving this aim. E-government is a new approach to governing that is followed by several developed countries, including the United Arabic Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Its idea lies in providing better services to people and business. This innovation has many positive sides, such as increasing the efficiency of departments, reducing the costs for customers, providing benefits to stakeholders, to list a few (Sethi & Sethi, 2008). In order to understand all the specificities of this topic, various ways of implementing and realization of such systems in the aforementioned three countries are analyzed.

Dubai

Different e-government initiatives were undertaken in Dubai. The Emiratis considered using of four implications, including information content, e-government promotion, ICT and e-government infrastructure. This country decided to practice such innovation since 2000 officially announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE Prime Minister. The main mission of such an innovation has been put on achieving a virtual government while providing high-quality e-services for people and businesses (Bastaki & Geray, 2005). The initial purpose of these services was conducting 70% of all services across these online channels till 2005.

Thus, this initiative has started with creating the e-government portal named Dubai.ae launched in 2001. It has been positioned as e-government infrastructure and a gateway to all other governmental departments. In the late 2002, those decentralized management system decided to upgrade their content with free access for government departments to e-government server via Graphics INput (GIN). This allowed Emiratis using the management software in publishing the content. This portal also has offered 110 e-services for community and individuals. Easy access to all the departments was secured by categorizing under various sections, such as education, business, residents, legal matters, tourism, and others. (AME Info, 2002).

The USA

It must be said that the USA has been more effective using this technology. About 60% of all Internet users are interacting with government sites and departments through the World Wide Web.

Significant amount of money is saved for taxpayers and great experience is being got by citizens. Official announcement of such an idea has been made by the President in “Expanding E-Government” program where it was integral to 5-part management agenda. In this way, the officials aimed to make government more focused on people and their needs. The fact of spending of about $48 billion in 2002 and $50 in 2003 by the federal government of the USA also gives an opportunity to stress that this country provides the greatest capabilities to development of this field.

Concerning the ways of implementing the e-government, the Administration of President has given advance and support of multi-agency projects improving citizen services and performance gains. To achieve this purpose, the Task Force has developed roadmap regarding the implementation of e-government, including the following aims:

• recommending higher payment for cross-agency ideas that are to be developed;
• indentifying main barriers of the federal government to be E-government and implementing actions to overcome them;
• developing a strategy that provides integration of governmental services.

The idea of e-government has gained success in the USA. It offers nowadays many benefits for improving the quality of serving the citizens and economizes a lot of time when using this service. With the help of such system, citizens are able just to file the report on the site which is to be reviewed in few hours. This system has improved government’s interactions with people, simplified delivery of governmental services, and eliminated a range of government management layers.

The United Kingdom

2011 was a prominent year in the life of e-government of the United Kingdom. The Cabinet Office launched a plan for the implementation of new ICT strategy. This model was projected and aimed to deliver about £1,4 billion funding for the next 4 years for better public digital services. According to the report of 2011 fiscal year, the project showed great progress in paving the way for a single governmental web domain. Following their aspiration to create e-government, the Efficiency and Reform Group under the Cabinet Office was founded in order to undertake an approach for improving the accountability of all e-government departments that also included ICT. The main target of the Efficiency and Reform Group was sharing ICT assets to improve productivity and reduce the likelihood of failure for this project. Key elements of the strategy were the application of agile project methods of management for ICT procurement and solutions that would meet the business requirements. This strategy aimed to build a special infrastructure that was maintained by common standards. These standards helped build the ICT moratorium, contract negotiations, and project reviews which allowed the government taking control of spending and ensuring that projects will be of value for the country (E-Government Strategy, 2002).

Coordination of this system was possible with the help of several special bodies created for the e-government idea practicing. The Efficiency and Reform Group has been a structure whose mission was undertaking the coordinated approach and improving accountability of all the government departments (E-Government Strategy, 2002).

The Chief Information Officers Council was a service which had to improve public service delivery. This Council acted and focused on partnership between IT professionals through the government. It was a mean for balancing the government-wide agendas.

One of the most important services of the entire system was the Chief Information Officers Delivery Board that comprised CIOs from all delivery departments sits. Its mission was also advising the ministerial committee on progress. Thus, the Board took a responsibility for implementation of the ICT strategy and was supported by action from all departments (E-Government Strategy, 2002).